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Please don't double post.

The aim of a study is what it is trying to find out and why. If people are conducting studies like this because they believe monogamy is the right and best thing to do and they want to devise ways of promoting and enforcing monogamy, it invalidates the credibility of their research. Ie turns it into a crock of shite.

You're missing my point, maybe because you are too invested in your POV?

A scientist lives and dies by his publications. A paper that isn't published essentially translates to doing no work.

That requirement then self selects on several criteria;
1) Select work that interests them
2) Select work that interests them and interests their supporters
3) Select work that interests them and their supporters and can get funding via grants and a properly worded proposal
4) Select work that interests them and their supporters and can get funding and which will generate output that is interesting enough to get published

So even if their ultimate #1 goal is to promote polyamory, they have to couch in a way to appeal to the mainstream political environment to get approval, funding, and publication. This doesn't make their research invalid, nor a crock, and this study in no way 'proves' monogamy is the right/best thing, and doesn't enforce monogamy.

I said it in my first post: this study confirms that men's brains can be fidelitous under oxytocin. This applies equally to monogamy as well as polyamory, unless you want to believe that men are incapable of being committed, dedicated, faithful, and trustworthy.

The mechanism of the study is constrained by current cultural mores, but doesn't make the research worthless. Oxytocin is also being researched as a treatment for autism and is already used to accelerate labor (under the name Pitocin), as well as lactation.

What this research shows us ultimately is that oxytocin has affects on the behavior of men, and can actually demonstrate the measured effects in terms of social distance and sexual monogamy.

Don't bring in your own hangups. You can criticize the cultural values all you want, but it isn't under dispute that modern human culture largely celebrates monogamy and it isn't really understood how that is possible given how promiscuous we can be.

If the culture celebrated polygamy then the paper would have said:

Quote:

Sexual fidelity is potentially costly for males, and few mammalian species along with humans exhibit it. The hypothalamic peptide oxytocin (OXT) has been implicated in mediating pair bonds in various species, but as yet, we know little about neurobiological factors that might act to promote fidelity, especially in men. Here we provide evidence for a mechanism by which OXT may contribute to romantic bonds in men by enhancing their partner's attractiveness and reward value compared with non bonded women.

I made two changes to the summary (in italics), and it is still valid without having changed the research.

QUOTE=Spock;254725]Their aim was to get published. The great thing about science is that it is public, reviewed, iterative, and available for others to criticize and adopt.[/QUOTE]

Unless you publish a study that shows Monsanto corn causes cancer. Then it's Ok to silence your research because the results are inconvenient for major corporations, even though you've passed through the peer review process.

__________________“As I am sure any cat owner will be able to tell you,
someone else putting you in a box is entirely different
from getting into a box yourself.”—bisexualbaker

You're missing my point, maybe because you are too invested in your POV?

A scientist lives and dies by his publications. A paper that isn't published essentially translates to doing no work.

That requirement then self selects on several criteria;
1) Select work that interests them
2) Select work that interests them and interests their supporters
3) Select work that interests them and their supporters and can get funding via grants and a properly worded proposal
4) Select work that interests them and their supporters and can get funding and which will generate output that is interesting enough to get published

So even if their ultimate #1 goal is to promote polyamory, they have to couch in a way to appeal to the mainstream political environment to get approval, funding, and publication. This doesn't make their research invalid, nor a crock, and this study in no way 'proves' monogamy is the right/best thing, and doesn't enforce monogamy.

I said it in my first post: this study confirms that men's brains can be fidelitous under oxytocin. This applies equally to monogamy as well as polyamory, unless you want to believe that men are incapable of being committed, dedicated, faithful, and trustworthy.

The mechanism of the study is constrained by current cultural mores, but doesn't make the research worthless. Oxytocin is also being researched as a treatment for autism and is already used to accelerate labor (under the name Pitocin), as well as lactation.

What this research shows us ultimately is that oxytocin has affects on the behavior of men, and can actually demonstrate the measured effects in terms of social distance and sexual monogamy.

Don't bring in your own hangups. You can criticize the cultural values all you want, but it isn't under dispute that modern human culture largely celebrates monogamy and it isn't really understood how that is possible given how promiscuous we can be.

If the culture celebrated polygamy then the paper would have said:

I made two changes to the summary (in italics), and it is still valid without having changed the research.

Replace the word monogamy with fidelity and you find the study isn't really about pushing monogamy, per se, so much as that the researcher writing the paper might not have the context to use any other framework.

It's like me criticizing you for not writing your posts in Spanish and Chinese because you are excluding non English reading people from this conversation.

What study are we talking about? The distance study? No, there were several factors that weren't considered. Even if it is "true" what then? Force cheaters and/or the ethically non monogamous to "dose up"?

What study are we talking about? The distance study? No, there were several factors that weren't considered. Even if it is "true" what then? Force cheaters and/or the ethically non monogamous to "dose up"?

The one posted by Dana. Let me recopy-paste my point:

Quote:

Sexual fidelity is potentially costly for males, and few mammalian species along with humans exhibit it. The hypothalamic peptide oxytocin (OXT) has been implicated in mediating pair bonds in various species, but as yet, we know little about neurobiological factors that might act to promote fidelity, especially in men. Here we provide evidence for a mechanism by which OXT may contribute to romantic bonds in men by enhancing their partner's attractiveness and reward value compared with other women.

And the abstract:

Quote:

The biological mechanisms underlying long-term partner bonds in humans are unclear. The evolutionarily conserved neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) is associated with the formation of partner bonds in some species via interactions with brain dopamine reward systems. However, whether it plays a similar role in humans has as yet not been established. Here, we report the results of a discovery and a replication study, each involving a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject, pharmaco-functional MRI experiment with 20 heterosexual pair-bonded male volunteers. In both experiments, intranasal OXT treatment (24 IU) made subjects perceive their female partner's face as more attractive compared with unfamiliar women but had no effect on the attractiveness of other familiar women. This enhanced positive partner bias was paralleled by an increased response to partner stimuli compared with unfamiliar women in brain reward regions including the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens (NAcc). In the left NAcc, OXT even augmented the neural response to the partner compared with a familiar woman, indicating that this finding is partner-bond specific rather than due to familiarity. Taken together, our results suggest that OXT could contribute to romantic bonds in men by enhancing their partner's attractiveness and reward value compared with other women

It seems clear enough to me.
1) Scientists suspect OXT enhances pair bonding; note the pair isn't to exclude polyamory, but because monogamous pairs are the norm. Nothing examined excludes multiple pairs
2) Intranasal OXT had three effects: bonded women were self reported as more attractive than unfamiliar women. Non-bonded familiar women were viewed as not any more attractive than unfamiliar women. Women other than the bonded one did not trigger any reward response. The self-reported attractiveness was confirmed via MRI via increased activity in the brain's reward regions
3) Hypothesis confirmed; OXT triggers the reward center of the brain when a male sees his partner. The next step then is to determine how the partner can trigger the release of OXT!